#fuck people still used queer as a slur where I live

[demonicdeviation]

some of yall have forgotten that faggot and dyke and tranny are slurs and are still used as such 

[saintjosie]

apologies if you’ve talked about something this before, but your post on experiencing exclusion in trans fem circles on account of being an east asian woman who speaks up came up on my dash and it reminded me of something that‘a been troublingme.

i’m also asian and trans, and i’m always really sent off-kilter when i see white trans people idealizing japanese aesthetics and asian people in general. so many white trans people use anime tropes and aesthetics while also othering real asian people, esp other asian trans people. does it feel appropriative/fetishistic to you?

i guess it’s just something that echoes general white-centric society but it feels like a lot of white trans people focus more on their transness and forget that their whiteness doesn’t just go away or get excused, if that makes sense

this is a great ask with no easy answer. the short answer is yes, you’re absolutely right, but there is also a lot of nuance that’s very important to address too.

white people in general have an enormous problem with misunderstanding the difference between appropriation and appreciation. and that applies to appropriating the culture of all people of color because appropriation is a symptom of colonization. part of that is because it’s very difficult to have a catch-all definition that clarifies the distinction between the two because each person approaches the things they consume in a different way, with varying levels of excitement. i simply cannot point a finger at all white people who enjoy anime and say, “this is bad”, because it simply is not true. it would be just as harmful if a white person were to say, “i would never watch anime because i think it’s weird”, because while appropriation is objectively a form of colonization, appreciation is a celebration of diversity. and celebration of diversity is good!

but i think you hit the nail on the head when you say that a lot of white queer and trans people forget that even though that they are oppressed by cis heterosexual patriarchy, the intersection of oppression that exists between oppressed identities and race means that as white people, they still have white privilege. full stop. and so we often have this issue, especially with young queer and trans people (young as in newly realized queerness and transness, not age) where there is a pause in deconstructing whiteness because they are too focused on deconstructing the privilege that they have suddenly lost by embracing their marginalized identities.

and the issue goes even deeper when you realize that people of color also struggle to realize that we often also perpetuate and contribute to oppression of other people of color as well. east asian people in particular forget that even though we are people of color, we do not face the same kind of oppression that black and brown people of color do, and often we perpetuate racism through appropriation of black culture and also just straight up racism. i think most asian people can attest to how often asian people can be racist as fuck. and i’ve definitely seen asian people who think it’s acceptable to make aave and using the n-slur a part of their personality. and at the same time there is an enormous problem with black people fetishizing asian people and latching on to anime and k-pop in ways that perpetuate the oppression of asian people, as well as just being racist towards asians in general.

and root of the issue is that white supremacy affects all of us. EVERYONE has whiteness to deconstruct because we all live in a system that was built on white supremecy, even if we do not have white privilege ourselves. the answer is that everyone period must bear the burden of constantly deconstructing whiteness, deconstructing our own privilege, and doing our part to lift each other up. and while it is true that white people often have the most work to do in deconstructing their own privilege, none of us are absolved.

[rs-hawk]

So just saw your post about not voting for trump. Good post. He's not a white nationalist though. Real white nationalists respect indigenous people. Place for every race and all that. He's just the run of the mill politician who says what he thinks will give him the most voters. Anyway, you'd probably be better treated by a white nationalist government lol.

This has been sitting in my ask box for like a month but just... Damn. This is wild.

You're telling me that I, a queer mixed Indigenous AFAB person who technically can be considered disabled, am respected by... White Supremacists? White Supremacists want me dead. I live in Texas. I come in contact with White Supremacists literally on a near daily basis.

They are the first ones to throw slurs at me. They are the first to say I should go back to my own country (and then say Reservation when I say that this is my country). They are the first ones to literally throw things at me at my day job. I have had people who I know for a fact are literally, LITERALLY, in the KKK, come into my job and ask why someone like me is working up front in a public establishment.

Again, I am mixed race. White Supremacists often either hate me off the bat because they know I'm mixed or see me as a minority and me simply existing in the same space as them is an affront. However, when they think I'm full White (as I am Italian and have been told I pass as Italian), and then find out I'm mixed it's so much worse. They take it as I lied to them. I had one customer at work a few years ago that we kind of flirted, and he was talking about taking me out when my job slowed down. I mentioned something off handedly about turquoise jewelry a few visits later, and he asked if I was "Indian". When I said yes, a total 180. He started accusing me of lying to him, saying I wanted to taint his blood line, blah blah blah.

Here's what you need to understand, sticking up for White Supremacists is just as fucked as being one. White Supremacists don't respect Indigenous Peoples. They want us gone. They want us somewhere they never have to see us. Reservations are not something we got out of respect. We have Reservations because we were forced to and it was all we were allowed. This is my ancestral land, and they still think I should be forced to live in another state because the government decided over a century ago (as the Nation I'm registered with was one of the last to be forced onto a Reservation) because they want to live here, in America, on traditional land, without wanting to see us.

White Supremacists don't respect us or any minorities. They want us out of their face. "A place for all races" just means out of their face or in what they consider in our place. A White Supremacist government is what created Reservations in the first place. A White Supremacist government is what forced my great grandmother's grandfather to be born on the side of the road during the march to the Reservation.

I am a firm believer that America is a Melting Pot. I am mixed race. I am proud of every aspect of who I am. I can list every ethnicity/race I am as I and my family are firm believers in knowing where you come from. As a child, my mom would quiz me on what I was and what side of my family it came from. It is important to know who and what you are. I have no issue with people being proud of who they are. There is no issue with wanting to only date/marry inside your culture imo. I don't have a problem with that. What is a problem is that White Supremacists (which is what I was calling Trump in my previous post) don't do that. They think they are better than other races. They don't want to even interact with other races. They. Are. Racist. And so is Trump. He called on the Proud Boys, a known White Supremacist group. Be serious.

[everywherenothere]

okay, so a couple of days ago i saw on the clock app this video of a jock and a obviously queer man living together and my brain went STEVE AND EDDIE OMG I NEED A FIC OF THIS and i know there is somewhere in the internet but i need to put into words so here it goes:

Robin loves Steve. And Steve loves Robin. They have been attatched to the hip since the mysterious accident that have burned the gigantic new mall and, subsocuently, the ice cream shop where they used to work. They have been living together since before Robin went to a college out of the little town they used to live (we all know Steve's parents were shit and probably being a teenager living alone, Robin's parents practically adopted him) and Steve without anything holding him back followed her.

Now, a couple years later, partners and one-night-stands came and went from their apartment because you cannot convince me those two dont have some kind of rizz. Steve with his bitchy attitude and jock alike body and Robin with her nerdy and charismatic energy have definetly bagged some people. One of them being the now-and-Robin-hope-for-a-very-long-time Robin's new girlfriend who the last two months has been living with them. And for sometime it was good, great even, but feeling like a third wheel most of the time Steve decided to move.

Apartment hunting was hard. Most places were way out of his budget or too small for a human to actually live comfortable and host dinners like he used to do when the now-not-so-kids visited him on the summer. So, he decided to search for a roomate. It was a little bit easier but to find someone who wasnt crazy and actually just mind their bussiness was a full job.

That's how he met Eddie. A nerdy metalhead who can and will up his bitchy attitude with a flirtatious response. And Steve absolutely loves it. At the beggining he tries so hard to convince himself that is just because he reminds him of Robin. That is just because both of them are a little bit smaller than him and nerdy. That is just because of the manerisms and the way they dont even flinch at his sarcastic and mean-girl-type of comments. That is just because both of them talked with passion about what they had been invested in the last couple of days.

But then is also the way Eddie always dress to impress and has a varierity of responses (and even actions) when people call him slurs without even letting those comments affect him.

And the way his eyes glows and do a little dance when he finally got one bridge right on a really difficult song that has been practicing the last couple of weeks.

And the way that he isnt a morning person but still wakes up earlier than Steve to make breakfast because he has learn that Steve bearly takes care of himself without a pressure of someone being dissapointed of him.

And the way both (Steve and Eddie) are on the couch on a Saturday evening watching nothing on the TV when Eddie starts talking his thoughts out. And of course, Steve being Steve cant help but tease him about something he said wrong and then it started: a back and forth of teasing and getting close as trying to prove a point. And when both are a hand away of breathing the same air, Steve realized. And Eddie purposly looked at Steve lips and get just a molecule closer just to see how Steve gets all red and backs down, of course Eddie laughs teasingly and walks to his room for a dictionary, leaving Steve all confused about wtf has happened. But Eddie's laugh continues to live on his ears and oh the way Eddie laughs.

Steve is pretty sure he is fucked up when he realized that he would do anything to make him laugh. And then Steve is also pretty sure that the friendship he has with Robin is one thing and the thing he has (or hope he has) with Eddie is another.

But that is one thought for another time, one existential crisis at the time, please.

[rydengg]

i know not everyone in the queer community absolutely loves rupaul’s drag race and there are literally dozens if not hundreds of questionable choices that’ve been made with the show over the years, especially in regard to how deeply excluded transgender drag queens were, and don’t even get me started on the slur they wisely and gratefully stopped incorporating entirely.

but at the same time there’s something to be said about the turn around in recent years with just how much trans rep is on that show. there were ALWAYS transgender drag performers on drag race - to be perfectly clear. kylie sonique love is one of many many many examples. past and present; they deserve their dues too and really, they’re the ones who deserve the most credit for entering those spaces brave as fuck. cis queens, trans fans, and just really people as a whole who pushed back and DEMANDED space for transgender drag queens on the show certainly helped us get where we are now.

like… you have to think that with what little trans representation in media there is still to this day, drag race probably holds a pretty handsome record for trans performers on a reality show, right?? contestants are choosing to speak and live their truth because they feel safe to do so and i’m so happy for them. this is such a good thing for queer culture as a whole.

[tenok]

Still fuming about «Crowley’s so queer it makes Aziraphale looks straight» take. I saw some people saying «queer is not a political identity» as an argument against it... and actually I disagree. Queer is an identity that’s as much about politics and community as is about gender and orientation. «Queer as in fuck you» indeed! And while I’m pretty sure that if you’ll ask Aziraphale he will say that he’s queer because mentally he still in times where it was term preferred by community as whole (or he’ll say that «gay» is his gender because he still links gender and orientation together and it’s a habit thats hard to break), I’ll argue that he’s definitely queer by definition. And I won’t say that one of them more or less queer, I want to vomit just from thinking this, but he and Crowley definitely different flavors of queer; and the point is community.

See, the Crowley we see is not the very community-oriented being. He despises angels and demons alike, he’s not close with humans, through whole series we saw him connected with Aziraphale, maybe Warlock, Shadwell to some point and only as a subordinate he’s not really interested in (Aziraphale actually remembered all the names of soldiers Shadwell pulled from his ass, on the other hand [book, also in script if I remember correctly]). But for Aziraphale community is the whole deal. He links himself to communities: community of book collectors, for example ([in book at least]), community of angels (even in season two he regretfully said that he misses reporting back to his lot), as soon as he put his roots there he become part of British and specifically London community (immediately clocked as British by everyone, for better or for worse). And he’s clearly consider himself and considered by others as part of queer community. For example:

He’s clocked as specifically effeminate gay man (which is part of queer umbrella oh my god stop misuse of political slogans gay are not some kind of others that are lesser for being gay!!!) by everyone, to the point of getting called homophobic slurs (twice in book, once in series) and being targeted by literal Nazis. He’s not arguing or denying, he reclaims it: he’s not calling himself gay, he’s proudly declaring that he’s THE southern pansy (not very «hurray establishment» of him hmmm?). He looks so gay and safe that cemetery man from season 2 doesn’t see a problem in telling him he uses grindr!

Tied to this: he can present as anyone else, he chooses to look soft, gay, effeminate, he chooses to make silly sounds and flamboyant gestures, and as soon as he gets comfortable he likes to go a little campy (can you imagine Crowley in ribbons and frills? do we see male-presenting Crowley in pink silky shoes? would he fight to the death before you put him into pencil-drawen moustache and bright cape with shiny starts? yes he’s GNC! there’s more then one way to be GNC and one is not better then other because it’s in black and sexy!). I’ll argue that him choosing one comfortable presentation and stick to this is no less groundbreaking by heavens standards then «hoarding all the genders» since he’s not treats his corporation as «meat suite», he really had an identity tied to it!

And using this identity he becomes part of 100 guineas club. Part of gay/queer (it was in times where this distinction was meaningless) community with fellow queers, where he learned queer ways, such as dances, becoming part of queer culture as a whole (and should I remind you that back in days drag was mandatory part of such clubs? if we measuring queerness by how close it to cross-dressing apparently). He also collects literature by queer authors, immersing himself in this culture, again. Do I remember correctly that Oscar Wilde gifted him one of his books specifically? So we can safely assume he hangs with queer authors as well? Correct me if it’s not in canon (I’m freely mixing tv and book canon there btw although usually I treat them as two different things)

He also lives in Soho. He specifically chooses to live there, knowing perfectly well what a neighborhood it is (even back in 1600s it already had a Reputation). He knows what it says about him and he aims for it! (Crowley lives in Mayfair because it says something about him too — remember that while Aziraphale constructed himself around being soft and gay, Crowley intentionally made himself look as irrating rich asshole. If this asshole has vibes of sinister gay that would gladly corrupt you if you ask nicely, that’s another story) He is a part of this community! As a word of god, he: speaks Polari freely because he used it… with other queers (as oppose to Crowley that knows «bits» because he hangs out with criminals); he hide incriminating things from fellow Soho residents back when there were police raids (breaking law to help those in need is reacurring theme with him!). He still part of this community, he knows people, people knows him, he literally gives place to lesbian women for free so she can have her dream shop (supporting your local queer business!) (also great call back to Edingurg minisode! Aziraphale, personal saint of broke lesbians!)

I’ll also argue that letting in first Gabriel and next Muriel was a very queer of him. Queers help other queers: he may not like Gabriel, but «he has no other friends» (and he's homeless after being kicked out from heavens after disaster forbidden love affair with other queer being, hmmm? paralleles with reality of being queer much?), so he steps in. And Muriel, while being the same age as those two (we're NOT child-coding Muriel in this house), vibes as queer youth in needs of guidance, and Aziraphale, that had every right to be suspicious and cold to them, immediately lets them into safety of his shop and tries to be nice and supporting in both older queer and older ND cousin way.

So, in conclusion: Aziraphale is a queer being, that likes to make it clear that he’s queer and queer GNC man specifically; he’s part of queer community for at least couple hundred of years, participant in queer culture, and he watches out for other queers, helping his own as much as he can, using his money and other resources and breaking law to do so when needed. What there can make him look straight even as a joke?

Crowley is absolutely a queer being too, in very queer love with other queer being, and I'm sure he has a blast pocking into rules and boundaries of genders, orientations and all kinds of relationships since he loves questioning and testing so much. He also has a cool rebellious aesthetic and «fuck all» attitude, so it’s understandable that he becomes tumblrs queer icon (and being played by David Tennant helps for sure). But if you ask them both where’s local shelter for homeless queers located, one of them will have an answer and it won’t be a Crowley, or he wouldn’t sleep in his car (I'm joking), and this is as much of the part of being queer as having cool aesthetic or being kicked from home (I'm joking again). And it's a shame that some people want to make a competention out of it, because it gives us infinity possibilities to discuss their different experiences and choices, down to what their respective aesthetic choices says about them, and how they can use their strong sides to support each other! But alas.

[aromantic-diaries]

a ton of aromantic heterosexual cis men, at least in uni, are awful. two of them were my friends. i trusted them, we bonded over them saying they were both straight aroallos and I was a bisexual oriented aroace and we got along so well. then one of them added me on accident (or maybe "on accident") to a group chat where they were like a group of like the european equivalent of frat guys and they were making fun of my identity and talking about my 'tight pussy' (cause I'm a virgin, I guess). i scrolled up and one of them was on grinder hooking up with pre-transition trans men because they're "easy" and apparently can be easily convinced to not use a condom. he didn't see any of them as men, just as tomboy-ish looking girls. he was also sending screenshots of some of the cis or cis-passing guys and calling them slurs.

I don't want these people in the queer community, i got them to join our gsa and they were talking shit about that too. i dont know what their goal with me was, clearly they were just mocking me and the queer community. maybe eventually they wanted to try to have sex with me or something, idk. but after that experience i genuinely do not trust cishet aroallo men.... its like saying that polish people should be allowed into spaces for "ethnic minorities" as theyre called here. like they might be a little oppressed. but also theyre all so racist and theyd make the space much worse for the more oppressed people who are strongly affected (like african immigrants) and can't just change their surnames to escape xenophobia.

Alright, before I even say anything I need to specify that I am not trying to invalidate your experience or go "not all men" on you, and I'm not defending these men.

What I do need to say is that any category of people will have shitty people without exception. These guys you talked about are shitty people without a doubt. But using polish people being racist as an example kind of falls flat because while that is true a lot of the time, it doesn't mean that their problems don't deserve to be fixed just cause a lot of these individuals are bad. I don't know the people you've talked about so I can't jump to any conclusions about them but listen. They weren't like that because they were cishet men who were aromantic, they were like that because they were shitty people, labels aside. And I'm sorry but queerness, or any minority status is not an indicator of morality. A lot of queer people fucking suck. A lot of them are terrible people. Someone can be a minority and still have their own -isms and -phobias against other minorities and that does not fucking mean they no longer deserve to live in a more progressive world or have any type of sympathy for their struggles. And yeah the polish people thing is uh... Yikes, I would have kept that to myself if I were you

[certifiablyinsanez]

My boomer mother told me once, “we thought we would change the world too”. And she isn’t wrong. Boomers were forefront of the hippie counterculture, the anti-war front for the slaughter in Vietnam, were home to the Gay Liberation Front, Stonewall, the Civil Rights Era, and the entire second wave of feminism that fought for our right for abortion, contraception and the right to self determination. They were the people that perished in the AIDS Epidemic and the ones who took care of those afflicted. When you look at the historic track record, boomers would seem to be our natural allies rather than those we are in constant conflict with.

This is something Gen Z needs to keep in mind, not for the future, but right now. Gen Z is often convinced that we are the generation who is gonna save the world. But I can say with confidence that this is not the case. Not only would that sentiment disregard historical precedent, it also allows us to disregard the ugly truth of what we are rapidly becoming. Gen Z is reactionary as hell. You’ll tell someone “we should have love for our fellow people” and some fucking keyboard warrior will say something stupid like “eVEn pEdO’s???”.

I never thought I would complain about cancel culture, but here I am. Because people can’t seem to differentiate between holding people accountable for reprehensible behavior versus having a whole “guilty before proven innocent” mentality. We all grew up in an imperialist, colonial society. White supremacy has not left a single inch of the earth untouched. Every single person has done something wrong in their lives; it’s a feature of the times we live in. It’s a feature of being a human person period. I’ve seen people harass an artist who has been extremely vocal about Palestine and has used their platform for donations and attention and people were in arms about something distasteful he did in like 2002. Be so ffr guys.

I see European Gen Zers saying the most abhorrent things about Romani people. They still actively call them a slur, and when called out they always reply “that’s just what they are”. Some brag about how desensitized they are to gore or sexual content because they were so young when they were exposed. I still remember kids at lunch trying to convince me to watch an ISIS beheading video and couldn’t conceive why I refused to watch it. I’m gonna say it.

So many of yall are just as apathetic and narcissistic as boomers, if not more so. Because boomers pretend, but yall are brutally honest about it. Sure a whole bunch of us believe in liberation and see how shitty capitalism is, but a good chunk are also so extremely far right that even my boomer republican father would balk at the things they readily say. I actually have had conversations with my dad as his queer communist child and I think we had more agreements than these right-wingers in my own generation.

This trend is enormously widespread with Gen Alpha but Gen Z isn’t clear of it either. The inability to fortify their own mental understanding using concise, accurate, and vetted information. In the 14 years I’ve interacted in fandom spaces (where this happens all the time), I’ve never seen such a trend as now where a singular person will just pull something out of their ass and people all over the internet just readily agree. People believe photoshopped photos every day. We make fun of old people for believing everything on the internet, but we’re equally guilty.

Listen I can go on for ages, but let me make my point clear here. We are quickly becoming the very thing we all hated most, and I’m sick of the mass facade that we aren’t.

End of rant.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

I don't know why this came to my mind, but I'm imagining a world where CrubblesJean was a thing, and now the great-grandchildren of Harry and Jean are on social media and like, "Oh, ha! My grandpa found all these letters my great-grandparents sent to each other during the war!"

"Awwww, so cute! They were best friends with this guy Joey who my great-grandpa met in navigator training!"

"My dad just yelled something about polyamory from the living room??? What????"

"OMFG MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS WERE IN A POLYCULE WITH THIS JOEY GUY AND NO ONE EVER TOLD MY DAD!!!"

comment: omg how did you not know

creator: i don't ask my family how my great-grandparents fucked. are you fucking weird.

comment (same person): i mean, like, did this guy not come to holidays?

creator: No, there's tons of photos of him. There's one of him holding me. Just everyone called him 'Uncle Bubbles' so I thought he was my great-uncle.

comment (different person #1): BUBBLES????

creator: call sign thingie, I think??? I don't know. He wasn't a pilot, so I'm not sure if it's still a call sign, but he's always talking about as Uncle Bubbles.

comment (different person #3): Wait. Is it Bubbles Payne, by chance? From Kentucky? group nav for the Bloody 100th before the role was handed to Harry Crosby, and then they worked together as co-group nav because of the intensity of the work in the 100th?

creator: ...My dad wants to know who the fuck you are.

comment (#3): I'm not weird; I just have a special interest in WW2 air battles. My great-grandpa was a mechanic on B-17s. Not with the 100th, but apparently everyone knew about them. He wrote a whole book he never published with all the info he could find. I read it.

creator: Oh. Cool. Okay. Dad says that yeah, those are the names.

comment (#3): Oh, neat! I think there's a bunch of queers from the 100th, actually. Here's a whole secret queer history of the military that names a bunch of them (link).

creator: Okay, now my GRANDPA is yelling because he didn't know some of these and is on the phone with people getting mad about not being told about "all the gays" (not in a mean way).

"Update: Turns out the extended family friend network is super fucking queer going back to at LEAST World War 2. I think I win queer history?"

comment (anon): You shouldn't use the q-slur.

creator: Thank you for giving me the reason to use a phrase I have only recently learned my great-grandma wrote in letters: If I wanted your opinion, I'd throw myself into the ocean with rocks in my pockets.

[qqueenofhades]

I came across a post about some show called The Other Two and it was making fun of Angels in America and I just...I didn't know how to react to it beyond rage. Like do young LGBT+ people understand how important that play is? How much it meant to our community and still means? Why are we all so irony poisoned that we put down the things that gave us comfort in a time where all of us are faced with the very real possibility of being erased from existence and murdered by the right wing nut jobs passing horrible legislation calling us child groomers. I'm so fucking sad and angry.

I'm in two minds about young LGBTQ people these days. On the one hand -- it's great that they get to grow up in an environment where they can (more or less) be themselves, have institutional supports like marriage and Pride Month and LGBTQ characters in media and plenty of visible discussion. It really, really is. All of that progress was hard won and we shouldn't WANT them to have gone through the exact same struggles as their elders. That's always the thing -- fight so your kids can have a better life, and we shouldn't want that to be any other way.

On the other hand, because this is the case, a lot of younger LGBTQ people don't respect the community's struggles, believe that they're real, learn its history, or understand the magnitude of the threat it is once again facing now. Instead they end up doing things like embracing TERF logic and arguing on social media about who has the right to use the most hyper-specific microlabel, pushing us all into smaller and smaller separate boxes because "queer is a slur!!!" and relentlessly gatekeeping and moralizing at other vulnerable people, both inside the community and outside it. And man, that just does not sit right with me. Of course, not all of them are like this, but a not-insubstantial number are, and it troubles me.

As for Angels in America: I saw Part 1 live in 2010, after reading both parts beforehand. It knocked the fucking SHIT out of me, and this is even before I had consciously realized that I myself was queer (though I was already reading a ton of queer lit/history like This Just Seems Neat, because I was clueless). So I don't know why the irony-poisoned postmodern masses feel the need to get their jollies out of taking shots at it, especially since, once again, times have changed and LGBTQ art and experience is represented in a whole lot of other ways than just "AIDS tragedy." Which is as it should be! But if anyone thinks that it's okay to then mock, minimize, ignore, or otherwise discount everything that led us to the point of them smugly having the ability to do that, then yeah. Fuck off. Jfc.

[spacelazarwolf]

Sorry some people still live in places where queer is used as a slur. Like it costs $0 to be nice and let people tag their blog appropriately. Like sorry us traumatized gays are part of your community too I fucking guess!

apology not accepted :)

[spacemancharisma]

vent under cut

so the background is that I work for a family-owned business in an extremely politically red area. I knew the owners were republicans, but didn’t realize until recently that they’re like,, hardcore about it. the wife wears trump merch 24/7 and they both toss the t-slur around in a work environment like it’s nothing. they have two kids though, around my age, and the son is gay, which I learned a month or two into working here. since then, i’ve come out to him & we’ve been friends, we’ve had solidarity, i’ve seen him make at least token attempts to chill his parents out. I’ve never made my personal political leanings obvious at work bc I know better, but it’s fairly obvious from everything about me that I lean pretty hard to the left.

all this to say- the other day as I was leaving work, I walked into the office where the parents & kids were all talking, and arrived while the son, my friend, was in the middle of a story that went “- and he asked me why he should vote for trump, so I was explaining like, ‘do you know what a 30% corporate tax would even do?’-” and I know it’s naïve of me to have expected anything but it still hit me in the fucking chest

and since then i’ve had this feeling of like,, rage and pain the way a little kid feels, all that righteousness and confusion because how can you not care about other people???? I’m just sitting at work feeling like I’m going to start screaming or crying because PEOPLE DIED FOR YOU. YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DIED IN THE FUCKING STREETS FOR YOU TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO RENT A LITTLE HOUSE WITH YOUR BOOTBOY BOYFRIEND AND MAKE OUT WHILE YOU VOTE FOR TRANS PEOPLE TO BE FUCKING EXTERMINATED. but what does it matter to fucking you, I guess, since you’re white and cis and male and masc and able-bodied. who gives a fuck about everyone you’re stomping on. who gives a fuck about the queers and the faggots and the trannys getting wished out of existence if it means that you, a Good Respectable Homosexual, don’t have to pay some goddamn taxes. I want to fucking throw up. this is a vent post bc I can’t be articulate about it. it just hurts. it fucking hurts that I am haunted every day by the spectre of an entire generation that republicans murdered in cold blood, and people like him haven’t ever even considered the what it would’ve been like if he’d been born a decade or two earlier. we have not recovered from the aids crisis. we will never recover from the aids crisis. the community we once had was fucking demolished, deliberately, and if you can go about your life & never think about how many people we lost & what we lost with them, you have fucking lost the plot.

how is it possible to so genuinely only think about capital, about fucking money. how is it fucking possible to care so little about other people????? people you claim to have community with???? yourself even?????? we live in fucking georgia dude, we don’t have room to backslide. panthers eating faces or whatever. maybe they’ll come for me first but I promise they are coming for you next.

they don’t fucking respect you. you’re not “one of the good ones”. they’ll never forgive you. they’ll never love you. and when they start eating faces, you’re not as far down that list as you want to be. I just don’t understand how disconnected you have to be to not see that, to not care, to think you’re above it. you are as filthy as any of us to them, and when you need someone to stand with you, it’s not going to be them. it’s going to be us, standing with you even if you never stood with us.

anyway.

[ladydeath-vanserra]

yeah see seeing all these ✨️city people✨️ and people with a lot of privilege and classism routinely calling rural iowans (SPECIFICALLY iowans) 'hicks' makes me angry and it makes me sad

we're not fucking STUPID. and a lot of the "stupidity" is often intentionally CREATED by making sure our schools are underfunded without access to proper education to build critical thinking skills and proper RESEARCH skills and limited access to news outside of newspapers and fox news. it's intentional. it's by design.

Educated rural folks who have the luxury (yes LUXURY and PRIVILEGE) to go to college to get educated LEAVE the areas where they could be the most beneficial for change and making communities diverse and more progressive and it furthers right wing, republican agendas by keeping people without access to resources and desperate and angry with the wrong people

"well you have access to the internet" yeah and the internet is full of misinformation and a lot of people are not taught how to look for credible sources or websites or how to look at biased language in writing so they ARE more susceptible to propaganda via fox News and the internet. you know what the internet also has? targeted ads and algorithms making sure you keep seeing the same kind of content and people who don't know DON'T know

however a lot of practical skills? knowledge that isn't BOOK SMART? I know plenty and they're so, so, so smart. but all I see from liberals and leftists is the refusal to use layman and simplified terms and "um! actually you need to educate yourself ☝🏻" and use unnecessarily difficult phrases

you say "defund the police" and people hear "be lawless and have no safety networks to prevent crime" instead of trying to find less #edgy slogans for what you ACTUALLY mean

you don't know what you don't know and calling us fucking hicks and ignorant isn't helping anyone. Tumblr was my first experience outside of Facebook where I learned about asexuality? it Didn't have an algorithm so I'll was able to be immersed in different cultures and view points

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone being in rural Iowa for being hateful or racist or queerphobic but after living in the city for the last few years, I still see the same shit. it's just less covert in rural Iowa and in your face and I see leftists and liberals using their proximity to cities, and the problems in rural america as a Shield for their own bigoted and hateful behavior

I remember being on Tumblr, slowly inching into the queer community spaces, bec I wasn't used to online spaces, i was too poor at the time to have access to computers [2013+] and I came across the terms "trans man" and "trans woman" and I thought that meant a someone assigned male at birth who was trans and identified as a woman was called a 'trans man' bec I didn't know the terminology or how it was supposed to be used. I didn't know "transsexual" was considered a slur and I got attacked online for accidently using the wrong terminology because I couldn't remember the term transgender

I was from rural Iowa, a notoriously white, cis het area, fairly religious area, without a lot of access to the internet so I just. didn't know. and then i was afraid of ever saying anything again or asking questions. pls for the love of God use discernment and don't immediately vilify and attack well meaning people for not knowing what they don't know. that is EXACTLY how you can prevent people from ever being willing to grow and become educated

I remember watching the movie "Boys Don't Cry" with my mom about Brandon Teena, a trans man, and we both didn't know enough or understand enough about trans people we were unintentionally misgendering him when we talked about it but we both were so empathetic and heart broken for him

rural people I know are Prideful! they're constantly working to make ends meet and they have pride in themselves and their communities, often to the point it's at their own detriment and republican law makers KEEP it that way and rely on the classism and anger and diversion to keep it that way

a yt rural American in Appalachia is going to have more in common with a black American living in the city in the Projects more than we ever will with upper class yt folks. the wealthy yt #liberals will mock us and call us fucking stupid and ignorant and get in their own way of wanting any kind of progression. it! is never! black and white!!! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BE KIND

why do you think rural Republicans don't trust the government? couldn't possibly have anything to do with the government IGNORING us or preying on poor folks who live paycheck to paycheck. of COURSE it makes sense they'd be leery about government wide programs. the government DOESNT CARE ABOUT US. and most rural "Republicans" I know aren't even republican. they don't have the time to invest in politics when we have to Work and can't Miss Work to go vote or find ways around road blocks.

most people don't know enough and vote for people they know and most don't Know democrats or their policies or their progressive goals and you know WHY that often happens? BECAUSE DEMOCRATS IGNORE THEM IN FAVOR OF CITIESSSSS. they call them STUPID and IGNORANT and can you really blame people for "not voting in their best interest" when the people who "care about their best interest" are people calling them stupid and ignorant and HICKS

I've been around Republicans in the city and Republicans in rural Iowa and if you look and listen close enough the *reasoning* for their racism (especially) tends to differ. racism is a social construct (that does NOT mean it isn't real or not important) and it was used specifically as a tool to create tension and a divide between the poor yt folks and the poc *by* yt, wealthy capitalists. the Irish were finally allowed to be #white bec they were identifying with the struggles of the marginalized folks being targeted just like THEY were in Ireland by Europe

the cold hatred I have seen from rural Republicans vs city, wealthy Republicans has been vastly different. don't get me wrong there are plenty of rural Republicans that are just as disgusting (I'm related to some lmao). often a lot of racism i see from rural folks is tied to anger and desperation from the lack of jobs and its designed that way. a lot of the racism from yt wealthy folks is tied to greed and wealth and capitalism. Donald Trump is a blaring example of an unchecked, racist, vile, classist man

I'm sorry I've had a REALLY bad week and living in a city with people who are so self centered and selfish and refuse to help has only made me miss home and despite all of the raging issues of rural america, I know a lot of kind and well meaning people who are just doing their best and willing to help you because we fucking know the government doesn't care about us

just. be kind. you don't know what you don't know and I think a lot of well meaning people shouldn't be getting attacked for it. empathy and grace should be given (when able) and people should be allowed to grow from innocent ignorance and mistakes

intersectionality and empathy and grace are so important and honestly rural america can be really beautiful and it really sucks to see it given up on in such a cruel way

I follow a person on tiktok who really embraces the idea of radical love and I think more people should too

[sophiamcdougall]

I saw a post earlier about "women's spaces" and how the writer had often experienced them as hostile rather than inherently safe and welcoming and therefore precious. Now, I could relate to that to some degree, as I still tend to start off pretty tense at events for, say, queer women even though I now go quite a lot of them: "hello I'm bi! If anyone's going to have a problem with that it would be nice to get it out of the way immediately!" But I do value some women's spaces. I would be sad if gendered loos, for instance, went away completely. I've had mad, intense conversations in women's loos that I do not think would have happened in an evenly mixed setting. I have experienced the Drunk Girl Oracle who exists nowhere but in the queue for the ladies: I want her habitat to continue to exist. But the thing is: no "women's space" I've ever been in has ever been this inviolate grove of Artemis where no man may set foot without getting turned into a fucking stag.

Trans women are women. Trans women belong in women's spaces. Trans women make me feel not less but more safe in women's spaces, for reasons that will become clear. When transphobes are screaming that the sky will and does fall in whenever a trans woman walks into a women's bathroom, of course I argue from that starting point.

But also I think it's worth examining the entire premise that spaces FOR [this type of person] are inherently spaces from which [that type of person] is banned.

So like, where are these women's spaces that don't come with the common-sense understanding that while usually, mostly you won't see men in there, if you do he's probably got reasons and its fine?

Is no one else seeing those signs that say "these premises are cleaned by male and female staff"? What about dads with small daughters? Is it really that bad if a man just plain gets lost or has one shot to avoid an emergency from time to time?

There was this meetup for bi people I used to go to. But of course there were never only bi people there. People brought along friends and partners who might be straight or gay. And oh-shit-it-turns-out-I'm-bi people who were still identifying as gay in the rest of their lives came on the quiet. And there was this one lesbian who -- ironically given a certain slur the GC crowd like to throw at bi women -- came quite unapologetically as a tourist, to observe our strange ways and, as she put it, to "encourage us."

These people were explicitly welcome. It was not a space from which not-bi people were barred. It was still a bi meetup. It was still a "bi space." I was at a sapphics' club night last Friday. And there were some men there. I mean, apparently cis, entirely male-presenting, gender-conforming men in the Women's Space™ . Some of them were bar staff, for starters. Is that OK with the GCs? Does all the terror and horror and loss at the thought of a man in your precious Women's Space go away if the man's being paid? If so, it seems oddly ... conditional. But also some of them some seemed not to be working but just sort of ... there. Maybe they were somebody's friends? They certainly didn't bother anyone. I didn't see where they ended up. You see, I was mainly focused on the hot chicks.

There's another wlw event I go to, to which a guy regularly shows up and we've chatted a few times. He usually wears what you'd conventionally call "women's clothes" but does not present as a woman. I know he uses he/him pronouns at present, (I asked) though he implied there was some possibility that might change. I don't know if he's a regular because he's a friend of the host or if he's a friend of the host because he's a regular. I don't know if something about the wlw label speaks to him on some personal level or if it's about queer solidarity, or if he's like the encouraging lesbian at the bi meetups. Whatever the reason, he's just there.

And aside from the fact that we have similar taste in hats, his presence in ye olde sapphic space also makes me feel more safe, for much the same reason the presence of a woman I know is trans does. I'm afraid it's selfish. Because if everyone's being cool about him, or about her, I can be pretty confident no one who finds out that I, too, disrupt binaries just by existing, is going to decide to ruin the evening over it. Because, you know, that has happened to me.

Now like I say, Actual Men in women's spaces aren't the reason trans women belong in women's spaces. But Actual Men entering women's spaces and not thereby ruining them forever do illustrate the utter pointlessness of thinking of women's spaces as these high-walled fortresses to begin with. Spaces for [a type of person] can exist, and still be porous. In fact, to be healthy and functional, they have to be.

[communistkenobi]

this is such a frustrating post because words do actually have power. It’s not some “metaphysical” or magical harm that people are fabricating, the language you use to describe reality (or, in this example, utter the word being used to describe reality) has an impact, even if you’re not yelling that word at a random person on the street. Like I feel insane having to say that. These words aren’t “labelled” slurs after the fact of their usage, they aren’t granted “cursed status” by some sjw council, that’s the origin of those words and that is their historical trajectory. acting otherwise quickly gets you into conspiratorial territory. faggot or tranny has no cultural meaning outside of being violent to queer people, and if you were able to stop everyone from using them as slurs they would functionally stop existing as words.

also hilarious to see a back-peddle of “oh well I won’t say the N word” why not? Because you understand that using it in any context as a non-black (especially if you’re white) person, regardless of context or circumstance, is inherently violent? Because you understand that words have the weight of history behind them and sometimes those histories are incredibly vile? You understand that words can be violent in and of themselves? Do you think people are inventing harm when they avoid saying that particular slur? I understand that the N word has an especially violent history that isn’t on the same level of faggot or tranny, but if you take the stance that saying slurs in “a critical context” is actually okay, you are still drawing a line where you believe it’s never okay to say specific words (a position I agree with), which means we’re now just debating the level of violence a word has to accrue before it’s determined to be unusable in any context - ie, the position this post is critiquing.

It’s just absolutely fucking insane to see people say that there’s a taboo around saying slurs and that it’s some counter-cultural act to insist that you won’t censor yourself. what planet do you live on

[funeralfire]

it's like... really obvious some of you have never had a pick up truck full of men hurl the word "queer" with hatred in their voices at you.. happy 4 you besties ... not all of us are able to/want to reclaim that word or relate to in with any sense of happiness. It's okay. You can call yourself queer. that's okay too. Just don't call me queer, it's not that hard :)

I think some people on tumblr who don't leave their houses forget that people actually get called slurs on the street still. Like it's not history, it's a fucking friday night for some of us. I'm well informed on the history of the lgbt community:) enough to know that it's polite to respect people when they don't want to be called what's commonly regarding as slur, at least in rural and conservative areas of America... where lgbt people still shockingly live!